Child of Fire: A Twenty Palaces Novel by Harry Connolly
icarp...@aol.com
I saw this book listed in new products in the Cthulhu Mythos community
on Amazon, so I got it and read it. It is a standard priced trade
paper back. The cover blurb is by the author of the Dresden series
(which I don't like) and Lawrence Watt Evans said it was good on
rec.arts.sf.written.
Well, I think it pretty much sucks.
It uses a Lovecraftian device for the basic presmise. Monstrous,
malevolent or just plain alien immensities lurk in the spaces between
domensions, trying to find life to feed off. They are referred to as
Predators (not named HPL entities, and not like Arnold fought). If
given ingress into our world they might be bound or bargained with, or
they might kill or overpower their hosts, depending on their size,
power or other characteristics. The Twenty Palaces are a secretive
bunch of wizards who know about this and will greease anyone they find
messing with the magic that summons these things. Woe to anyone
caught in the crossfire.
Child of Fire deals with one flunky on the fringes of the organization
trying to take care of such an occurrence with a really deadly
hitwoman for the Twenty Palaces. Apart from the transdimensional
intelligences, the only part that had any Lovecraftian feel at all was
the 1 page where the protagonist was communicating with the large
Predator eating the local children. Otherwise this is more a
supernatural detective/'thriller' type novel a la Harry Dresden,
without the touchy feely relationship crap polluting the femme vampire/
werewolf series like Sookie Stackhouse, Mercy Thompson and countless
others.
This genre is basically beach/airplane fodder (which is why I picked
it up) so the standards are not high, but this was clearly a first
novel and was quite poorly written. What was happening and why was
opaque, the prose was congested and confusing, the action was
unconvincing, the dialogue an afterthought and all the characters
major and minor were quite unsympathetic caricatures.
Save your money; get it from the librar and read a few pages before
you buy if you are at all interested. Or annoy the bookseller and
read it in the store first.
Matt
Avid Fan
Thanks for your reviews. I always find them interesting.